Batman: Arkham City Writer, Paul Dini, Is All Tied Up Until 2013

Last week, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City writer, Paul Dini, revealed via Twitter that he isn’t working on any more Batman: Arkham games or content at present.

When asked if he was instead working on what is rumoured to be a Silver Age Batman game, Dini replied that he had no knowledge of the project, and that he had only heard rumours about it alongside the rest of the world.

“The last talk I had with Warner Interactive about future games was while I was doing promotion for Arkham City last September,” Dini writes. “Naturally as there was such a rush of interest about Arkham City, everyone was asking me about a third game, and frankly, I had been wondering about that myself.”

“When I asked about the possibility of working on a third game I was told that as Rocksteady had just finished wrapping the second one, it would be a while before everyone was ready to sit down and discuss future plans. That said, it was intimated that for future games, Warner and Rocksteady might not be looking as much to freelance writers, the message being, that if I had something else interesting coming my way, I might want to take it.”

“When I later read their subsequent announcements about the Harley Quinn’s Revenge game expansion and the rumored Arkham prequel/JLA game, I figured they had filled their writer needs,” he shares. “I had long before taken WI’s advice and booked my schedule with a number of other projects, leaving me unavailable to take on anything new until 2013.”

Dini says in closing: “It was fun working with Warners and Rocksteady on the first two Arkham games and I am grateful to them both for a tremendous experience. Rocksteady has a great crew of artists and storytellers, and it was exciting and enlightening for me to be part of that team. If we wind up working together again at some point, that would be cool, too.”

The sad thing is that Warner and DC are content to leave their stable of characters to languish in other media for the sake of worshiping at the financial altar of the bat. Wouldn’t it benefit them in the longterm to leverage this newfound success in video games and use the engine to introduce a different DC hero?

Hell, the mechanics from these games could easily be retooled to work for Green Arrow (would end up in the spirit of the Thief game series), or even have Rocksteady tackle The Flash? Why do we need to see them tread such unbelievably familiar ground again? (other than just for money)

It’s shameful how DC/WB has mismanaged their superhero properties time and time again, and now that Nolan is done, I doubt we’ll even see another competent film out of the DCU. Such wasted potential.

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